20th January: Oh dear, it’s one of those days where yet again people are seemingly worrying that we are going to run out of pictures of naked women. All the ones on the internet must be getting used up or wearing thin or something, judging by the bile and panic regarding the Sun Newspaper’s editorial decision no longer to show women with naked breasts on Page 3. ‘Please, please, please, save these endangered mammary glands!’ comes the frantic cry. A load of flat-chested, pig-ugly, ill-tempered jealous feminist types with no notion whatsoever of fundamental tenets of liberal society have just prevented other women from taking their clothes off and prevented a whole load of fun-loving men from looking at breasts.
Panic not. Nobody banned anything.
Yes, there was a campaign run by people who didn’t like Page 3. But if you noticed, there were others who argued back. Yes, the Sun is not going to put boobs on Page 3 anymore. But was this by some forced decree? No. Was there a law passed banning this? No. Did the anti-Page 3 campaigners post a sinister video on Youtube of Rupert Murdoch, clad in an orange jump-suit, pleading for his safe release if only Page 3 were abolished? No, or at least, not to my knowledge – I presume that if one had been posted, it would have had plenty of publicity by now.
In fact what appeared to happen is that some people said quite clearly they did not like Page 3, and gave some reasons. Other people said they did, and gave some reasons. So far, so good, in a democracy – remember that?
The next thing that happened is that a newspaper, owned by a vast corporation headed by Rupert Murdoch, came to its own decision at an editorial meeting.
Er … that’s it.
UPDATE 22 Jan 2015: See. Told you. Still, somehow, some people on twitter are crowing that feminists were ‘wrong’ to have ‘forced’ a ban, when it’s demonstrably not the case that there was indeed a ban, or that anyone was ‘forced’ to do anything.
So, how it goes is this:
1. Feminists wrongly accused of forcing a ban on something.
2. People discover that nothing was banned, nothing was forced.
3. Feminists still wrong for ‘forcing’ a ‘ban’.
Er … that’s it, again.